


wish you were here

by j_gabrielle



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Pining, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-13 05:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20577395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_gabrielle/pseuds/j_gabrielle
Summary: He wakes with violence. The London vista outside is beautiful when he steps up the floor to ceiling windows but when he blinks, James sees the shape of a London not his own superimposed onto the skyline.





	wish you were here

He wakes with violence.

James can taste the panic high in the back of his throat, eyes wide and frantic as he anchors himself in the halogen glow that cuts through the darkness. He rallies himself, slowly coming back to the here and now.

It's fine, he swallows, it's fine, you're here now, you are here.

Fumbling for his bedside table, he sits up, uncapping his medicine bottle and swallowing the pills dry. Were they the right ones? Maybe. He doesn't know and he doesn't think he can bring himself to care. Pushing back the thin blankets tangling at his calves, he cannot suppress the shiver that runs up his spine at the ghost touch of a never-ending winter.

It's fine. It's 2019. You're in London. It's fine, you're fine.

The carpet feels rough under his bare feet when he settles them on the floor. Distantly, he can hear sirens blaring out from some nearby alleyway, jolting him further from rest. James rubs a tired hand on his cheek, exhaling. He can't remember the last time he had a proper night's rest.

Probably around the time you started your last book, comes the slow thought. It's the same one again tonight. The same dream as it has been since he started on 'Continuity' - a thriller about a group of men out in the Arctic who meet with various dangers as they do their best to survive. His agent had told him that it was another bestseller, that there were plans for the rights to be optioned off, that he could be set on another book tour of the States. Whatever exuberance James would have found at the thought of getting to travel is muted and cast in shadows. 

The London vista outside is beautiful when he steps up the floor to ceiling windows. Desolate streets in the middle of the night with the odd black cab taking home the stragglers from a night out. He has been lucky in life thus far. He's healthy, he has a job he loves for most parts, and a social circle that includes many of his creative peers that stimulate him, but still. It feels like there is a space missing, a shape of something he cannot quite put to words that is gone around him. It displaces him like a fallen leaf on the surface of a pond - making ripples, but never piercing through the water's surface.

When he blinks, James sees the shape of a London not his own superimposed onto the skyline. Ghostly buildings that rise and dip, shapes of houses and roadways that run through modern office buildings and shopping districts. Once, out of curiosity, he did his best sketching it out and taking it to one of his historian friends, passing it off as just a lark, only to find her looking back at him in blinking astonishment.

"It's the skyline of pre-war London. Victorian, if I were to hazard a guess. How did you even conjure this up in your imagination?" She had asked. He didn't answer.

Sometimes, he thinks he sees faces in the crowd. Faces of people he thought looked familiar to him, but every single attempt he tries to place them in his memories, it's like breaking through a thick fog. No matter how much he tries, he can't do it.

James thinks he's losing his mind. 

* * *

He is half-squashed in the morning rush of the London Underground when he sees him on the platform of St Paul.

Jopson, the name comes to him in the same way a puzzle piece slots back into place.

Jopson, who he handed a promotion letter to. Jopson, with eyes like cut glass. Jopson, who he feels a dull sense of jealousy about, but whatever brought that emotion on, he has no clue.

James is pushing, moving, lungs sticking with the distinct smell of the Tube and the press of barely awake bodies that keep him from the man. Desperation is the only thing is his mind, forcing his feet towards the entrance. If there's a Jopson, then there could be--

There could be.

He stops. Spilling out of the closing doors between disgruntled commuters who are upset about being pushed through like that. Who could there be next to Jopson? If Jopson is here, who should be there next to him? The burn of adrenaline fades away as quickly as it comes and he is left on the platform looking for a face who has disappeared into the river of faces.

* * *

"I'm fine, Mama," James says, the words rolling off his tongue easily. "Don't worry."

He hears a soft crackle of static, looking up and back to his laptop screen where he catches the way his mother's lips twist in disapproval. She pushes the camera back and he can pick out the shadow of his stepfather passing behind her into his office.

She had had him in her twenties, freshly graduated from Oxford, deciding that, after a short period of living with James' biological in the Cotswolds that this wasn't the life she wanted after all. It had been just them for the longest time, but James never found anything lacking about the way he was raised or the childhood he had. They'd lived in London until his teens when she took him with her to China for a new start.

He moved back to the UK alone for Uni after he finished his GCSE. She had met his stepfather on a cruise for her 44th birthday and moved back to her native Brazil after that. It has always been just them and in a lot of ways, she feels closer to an elder sister than a mother, save for moments like these when she frets and worries.

"I am. I promise." He drops the last of his potatoes into the pot, closing the lid for it to cook. 

"I'm your mother. I worry."

"I know." James shakes his head, smiling ruefully. "I can't wait for you to visit. Tell Thomas that I booked the hotels for the road trip and I'll email the confirmations over to you."

She rolls her eyes, but her smile is amused. "You are too efficient."

He laughs. "I learnt it from you."

* * *

Perhaps in some way, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Harry Peglar and John Bridgens would be the first ones to find each other. 

"Sir!" Bridgens exclaims, alerting the younger of the two from where he is shelving James' books at the corner of the shop. His publisher had requisitioned a shop in Soho for his London reading and signing session as part of his promotional activities for his latest book, and James had taken it upon himself to scout the place out. He laughs, feeling a cold ball of misery he hadn't even been aware that he was carrying around unfurl like a flower in the sun.

"I should have known," James shakes his head, turning to cast a look to the smart lettering spelling out 'Peglar, Bridgens & Co.' on the window. But he is smiling. The stretch of his lips pushing at the muscles of his face and it feels like an unfamiliar sensation. 

He shakes Bridgens' hand enthusiastically and pulls him into a hearty hug a beat later. Elation sits high in the back of his throat and he doesn't fight the warmth that spreads from his chest when he pulls Peglar into the tangle of their bodies. James feels some small sense of relief mingle with the happiness in him at the way the two men in front of him are so very alive and very hale. If anyone should find some happy end, it should be them.

He holds them by their cheeks in each hand, smiling, smiling through the tears that blur his vision.

When they break apart, Bridgens wipes away the wetness on his face, clearing his throat. Without another word to each other save for the tenderest of looks exchanged with a watery tilt of their heads, Peglar ushers James up the stairs while Bridgens locks the doors and pulls the shutters. Climbing two flights of stairs to the top of the shop, where James finds himself being led into the sole flat and left in a brightly lit and homely living room while Peglar turns down the hall to put the kettle on.

Pictures of Peglar and Bridgens on holiday, standing in front of their shopfront, dressed in smart suits on what looked like their wedding day, smiling and laughing in moments frozen in time captured through what looks like the passing years, line the mantlepiece over the fireplace. Books with cracked spines line the shelves, bending it under its weight, and when he inspects it further, the titles of the books were of varied topics that ranged from gardening manuals to 19th-century poetry. James huffs a soft laugh to himself. Looking around the space, there are clear signs that this is a home and it is filled with love.

"He found me, you know," Bridgens says from the doorway. His eyes twinkle with fondness as he crosses the room to pick up the picture of them with their dark suits dusted with confetti, cheeks coloured pink with Peglar leaning up to kiss Bridgens' cheek. "I'd been wandering England, aimless and looking for something I couldn't name. And then one day, just when I thought I will always live with this absence in my heart, he found me."

"Did you know him when you saw him?" James asks.

Bridgens sets the picture back down, turning to face him. "The second our eyes met. It was like coming home."

* * *

James sees Jopson again but this time he is seated under the awning of a cafe, knocking his knee to the knee of a man that, upon a longer look, was a clean-shaven Little. They sit comfortably together, talking with their heads bowed, sharing soft looks of fondness.

Then he sees Goodsir hurrying past him on the street as if he was in a hurry home. James hopes he is and that there is someone waiting for him there. In quick succession after were bumping into the Franklins at a function his agent had to practically bully him into attending. They didn't speak to each other, but there is a little part of him that thinks that it was nice to see the man, for all his flaws, seemingly well.

And even after all of those familiar faces coming into his life, he still hasn't seen the one face he has been looking for.

* * *

He hears him before he sees him.

It was just a whisper of his name while he was battling the rain and trying to hail a cab. Initially, he brushed it off as someone recognising him from his works, but it happens again and again, and the instant he realises that it was a familiar Irish lilt ringing through the sounds of the traffic and the rain, James jumps, turning on his feet and almost slipping.

"James."

It must be the water in his eyes. It must have been something else, but he thinks he cried, just like how he cried when he saw Bridgens and Peglar, but this time the feeling is more than just relief; an overwhelming, heart-stopping feeling of happiness that strikes him dumb, completely unable to do or say anything other than the one name.

"Francis."

* * *

He wakes slowly to comfort.

There is a weight pressing down on his side, blanketing him, anchoring him down. He turns his face and immediately buries his nose into the day-old bristles tickling him, making him sneeze. 

"It's too early," Francis slurs grumpily.

"Sorry," James whispers back. Daylight is breaking outside their window and soon, the world will follow.

The body next to his moves. An arm is thrown over his shoulders and he is folded into a sleepy embrace, cheek to chest, bed warmed skin to his. A kiss is whispered to his hairline and he closes his eyes again. 

Francis is here and there is nothing else he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> I lost my grip on the reins of this and this was what we're left with oh well...  
\--  
I have never, will never, allow any reposting or translations of my works without my permission. All of my works will and shall only be hosted on my personal accounts on AO3 (j_gabrielle), Dreamwidth (j_gabrielle) and Tumblr (randomingoftherandomness, hardheartshere).
> 
> For those who say that I never said anything, it is clearly stated on my AO3 profile bio.
> 
> I do not have a Twitter account. 
> 
> I do not have a Wattpad account. 
> 
> **Please Do Not Repost My Fics**


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